The Aphrodite glided to a stop as the rowers rested at their oars. Then she began to bob on the Inner Sea like a toy boat on a rain puddle. The motion felt odd to Menedemos: a galley on the open sea should be going somewhere, doing something. He looked forward to his cousin to see how Sostratos was taking it. To his relief, Sostratos seemed all right. Menedemos didn’t call out to him, lest he remind him things were out of the ordinary.
Part of the skipper still wanted to go north so he could find out how the sea-battle fared. But if he found out it was going badly, that would be worse than staying back and staying ignorant. Good news could wait.
He wasn’t the only one fretting. “Wish I knew what was happening,” Diokles muttered.
“What do you think? Shall we go up and get a better notion?” Yes, that part of Menedemos still wanted to.
“I’d like to, but ….” Diokles tossed his head. “To a five, we’d be no more’n a fried sprat. Wouldn’t even bother chewing, just swallow us whole.”
“That’s how it looks to me, too,” Menedemos said, not without regret. It had also looked that way to his cousin. Diokles’ notion of good sense was very different from Sostratos’. When the two of them coincided, going—or, here, not going—in the direction they both indicated seemed a good idea.
Time went by. The sun crawled toward the western horizon. Somewhere not very far ahead, horrible things were happening to men who probably hadn’t done anything in particular to deserve them. If those things didn’t go the way Ptolemaios hoped, before long those horrible things might start happening to the transports, too.
Or to me, Menedemos thought uneasily. He spat down his tunic front to turn aside the omen. Superstition came easy out at sea, and he was less skeptical to begin with than his cousin.
Not very much later, Diokles said, “Looks to me like the fighting is curling towards us, not away.”
“I was thinking the same thing. I kept hoping I was wrong,” Menedemos said.
Then came an unmistakable sign: almost in unison, the crews manning the transport galleys ahead of the Aphrodite started rowing again, and rowing as if their lives depended on it. And, no doubt, their lives did. They straightaway lost the order they’d kept so long. Some sped south; others wheeled in the water and hurried back toward the west.
Sostratos trotted aft from his station at the bow platform. Before he even got to the stern, he started calling, “Daddle! Let’s ske! Daddle! Let’s ske!”
In spite of everything, Menedemos laughed. Then he said to Diokles, “It’s gone bad. The Ptolemaios can’t blame us if we head for Rhodes now. I’ll bet he’s trying to save his own hide, if he still can.”
As if to underscore that, someone aboard a transport heading west shouted “Fly, you fools! It’s all up with the war galleys!” to the akatos.
Diokles said something pungent. Then he beat on his triangle. “Port oars forward, starboard oars back!” he shouted to the rowers. “Get ready, boys! We’re heading home, if we can get there. On the stroke!”
Aided by the steering oars, the Aphrodite turned almost in her own length. “O Sostratos!” Menedemos said sharply. “Come on up here and keep watch astern of us. If any of Demetrios’ ships get on our tail, I want to hear about it.”
“I’ll do it,” Sostratos said, and did. Standing on the stern platform, he could see a little farther. If the mast were up, if someone small could scamper to the top of it, that would be better yet. But the mast would stay down for now.
Menedemos kept wanting to look back over his shoulder himself. And he yielded to temptation every so often. He could afford such glimpses. He told himself he could, anyway. Sostratos might have had something sharp to say about the way he rationalized, but Sostratos didn’t know he was sneaking those looks. Menedemos’ dutiful cousin kept his eyes on the water behind the akatos and didn’t check to see what anyone ahead of him was doing.
Then, just when Menedemos was feeling proud of himself at not checking for a while, Sostratos sang out, “I think someone’s chasing us!”
“Oh, a pestilence!” Menedemos blurted. He did look back then. Sure enough, a beamy galley, a six or maybe even a seven, was churning up the Inner Sea as it came after the Aphrodite. To Diokles, Menedemos said, “Have the boys give it all they have. Maybe we’ll be able to run away from that overgrown seagoing catamite.”
Diokles grunted laughter. “I like the way you talk, skipper. The way you think, too.” He raised his voice to a shout so all the rowers could hear him: “Put your backs into it, lads, unless you reckon going up on a slaver’s block is the best thing that can happen to you.”
He upped the stroke again. The men at the oars couldn’t hold that kind of sprint for long. With luck, the rowers aboard their pursuer couldn’t, either. “Let me know if she’s gaining,” Menedemos told Sostratos.
“She is,” his cousin answered: not what he wanted to hear.
XIII
Sostratos wished he had somewhere nice and safe to run to. That failing, he wished he could show how afraid he was. Well, he could, but not if he wanted to be a man among men in Rhodes ever again. Sokrates’ Be what you wish to seem, ran through his head once more.
Sokrates had been brave in battle. Alkibiades talked about it in Platon’s Symposion. The philosopher might have been scared green inside, but he hadn’t shown it. And Sostratos did his best to look relaxed as he gripped the Aphrodite’s sternpost with one hand and shaded his eyes with the other.
Demetrios’ gods-cursed war galley kept looking bigger, which meant it kept getting closer. Why weren’t its rowers exhausted? They’d fought in the sea-battle against Ptolemaios’ fleet. And pulling big oars like that, even with two or three men on them, had to be wearing … didn’t it?
By the signs, no. As a wave trough showed the war galley’s ram, Sostratos got a glimpse of its three-flanged bronze ram. He imagined that ram crunching into the Aphrodite’s stern or flank. He’d always prided himself on how vivid his imagination was. Just this once, he could have done with less of it.
Like Ptolemaios’ warships, this one mounted a catapult at the bow. Its crew seemed busy. Sure enough, its crew was busy. A bolt flew from the catapult and splashed into the sea no more than thirty 30 cubits astern of the akatos.
“O Menedemos!” Sostratos said sharply. “They’re shooting at us!”
“They should get a catapult bolt up their pink piggy!” his cousin replied. Then he raised his voice to a roar all the rowers could hear: “If you’ve got anything left in you, boys, now’s the time to spend it. We won’t have much fun if they catch up to us.”
Back on Demetrios’ galley, the catapult crew loaded a new bolt in the groove and drew back the bow with the windlass, then shot again. To Sostratos’ relief, this missile also fell short. By a little less than the first? Or by a little more? For the life of him—which might be literally true—he couldn’t tell.
Archers also stood on the fighting platform that ran from the war galley’s bow to stern. They didn’t waste time or arrows shooting at the Aphrodite. If the catapult couldn’t reach her, their arrows surely wouldn’t.
They wore crested helms and bronze corselets, as if they were fighting on land. Sostratos wouldn’t have cared to do that. A stumble could send you into the drink, and then you’d surely drown. But you’d want such protection if you had to worry about other galleys full of archers and slingers and spearmen. A big ship like that turned a sea-fight into a pankratiasts’ brawl where brute force usually prevailed over skill.